In the past week, I’ve encountered far too much lazy journalism when it comes to Internet filtering; young journos calling to ask for the basics of filtering (and I’m far too polite to send them here), mostly, and now, crap like this.
In the first few paragraphs, the author of the article states quite clearly that the administrator of the removed Facebook group took it down himself. Two paragraphs later, they offer a quote from Reporters Without Borders stating that Facebook’s strategy in removing the page was wrong. What? This article should have been about the UAE’s censorship of the page. I shouldn’t be surprised, however, considering JPost (and the UK’s Telegraph) based its article on one by The Media Line, the “Mideast news source” that once fabricated an entire interview with me because I didn’t respond to their request for one quickly enough (I’m not kidding: they actually “quoted” me based on something I’d written elsewhere).
Apparently my complaints about lazy journalism have reached a fever pitch this week, judging by the responses from friends and colleagues I’ve griped to. One, in response to a snarky comment I wrote in an email (“I’ve seen the future of journalism, and it scares me”), even sent a poem along:
ah, yes, welcome to the
remedial education
known as press calls
thus
my utter lack of sympathy for the death of newspapers, blah blah blah blah
cry me a river, stupid and lazy reporters!